Tuesday, March 22, 2011

At SXSW we figured we’d have a lot of time to update the JMSMC page and we were very much wrong. We played to a packed house on a rooftop bar (umm, a big crowd on a roof), made a TV appearance, detoured to Taylor, Texas for free beer and a small show, played a coffee shop acoustic set and saw too many other shows in too little time. Also, the insomnia wave is best ridden drunk. To recap, free time was a no go.

And now that I’ve more or less caught up on sleep and/or substituted beers for energy drinks, I am ready to unveil the one most memorable event from the SXSW madness: a girl.

Now don’t take-off running because I promise it doesn’t get mushy here. Me rockstar. Me no cuddle. Me rockstar. Me rock. It just so happens that there was a brunette with the (second) most beautiful capo I’ve ever seen.

She was a brunette, the capo a blonde. She had long smooth legs and the capo shined in the stage lights during her solo acoustic set. She played in one of those basement bars where the inexplicable always seems to occur, and her voice was what first jolted me into sobriety. They say love is intoxicating, but if you’re already at the latter I suppose it works the other way, too.

As I was admiring her, er, blouse selection, I noticed her fancypants Takamine guitar and then this custom pearl white capo with a swirling extension that looked like her initials. I was now full-on sober, if you pick up what I’m putting down. I put myself down in a chair and did the whole elbows-to-table-and-chin-to-fists thing and was more than enthralled with her ability to move while seated, how her hair fell along the frets, how she picked with her eyes closed and sang so heartily it must’ve began in her toes.

I cannot specifically recall the melody to that song but I can remember every detail of every brick on the walls around her and every face staring as equally as intently as I had been. She strummed a last eerie minor chord and received a calm we’re-not-going-anywhere applause. She reached for the shiny white capo, soothingly slid it up three frets and said, “This song is a cover and it’s called Waiting on the World to Change. I hope you know it and sing along.”

My sober state vanished with the help of a Saint Patty’s Day car bomb and we left.